<p>My S was accepted to the Engineering program for the fall semester. He is top 1%, 4.0 GPA, 8 AP courses with test scores of 5 so far and a 2030 SAT (1330 composite). He has received one small merit scholarship and we are hopeful he will get more. Our family family EFC is quite high due to assets. My question, is it better to file a FAFSA with a high EFC or don't file at all? We don't want his merit scholarship chances to be hurt in any way due to our EFC. I'm concerned that some merit scholarship may still see his EFC and reject him. Advise?</p>
<p>Short answer is: file. You take him out of the running for many scholarships if you don’t, they have the requirement of having FAFSA on file (we were told to file by the college- our bigger amount came from Mays). I would imagine that the non-FAFSA scholarships are the ones you already have received. You list who you want to submit your FAFSA to, so it isn’t just revealed to everyone (at least that’s my understanding). </p>
<p>File. I am a current student. We have an extremely high EFC like max number of $99,999 due to my dad’s high income. Doesn’t help at all for grants like Pell with high efc, but doesn’t take him out of merit scholarships. His scholarships are merit based, so that’s strictly on academics. Even with this high efc, i remember I still got scholarships from almost every school I was accepted in my senior yeat except A&M. The fafsa does help me get a very reasonable unsubudized loan. I would talk to a financial advisor at A&M to check.</p>
<p>Agree with ToyotaTundraFan above that merit scholarships don’t seem related. D never completed a FASFA form because we would not be eligible at all (of course, we did have to disclose a high income on the Apply/Texas application) but received A&M merit scholarships. </p>